TOUCH ME I’M SLICK: THE SUPERB SEVERITY OF TERRY CAVANAGH’S SUPER HEXAGON

“Didn’t the original come together in like four hours one morning?”, I ask. “Sometimes it just works like that,” Terry Cavanagh demures.

Having launched just days before this site opened its doors, a super-strong recommendation of Cavanagh’s updated and fantastically feature-complete Super Hexagon for iPhone & iPad is long overdue, and in the intervening time, the game’s gone on to be as well received as it richly deserves.

Sometimes it just happens that a game pops into the universe and makes you wonder how it’s possible that something so simple hadn’t materialized yet in all of videogaming’s past, at the same time as you wonder how it’s possible it’s not a time-travelling relic from videogaming’s future.

I’ve described the game probably ad nauseum as a “27th century space-disco teen-laser-punk arcade hit”, but it’s still how I see the game, and having run it at a few live events over the past few months, it’s amazing at how perfect a portable party it is. Providing its own ultra-hypnotic visuals and blasting its own fantastically forward-focused beats courtesy Chipzel (grab her soundtrack EP here), it’d nearly be danceable were it not stop/starting every 15 seconds in unskilled hands.

If you haven’t played it yet, do not hesitate a moment longer: your hands will initially be even exponentially more unskilled, but patience and zen-training (borrow my mantra & embrace the negative space) will pay off, and you may find yourself in as much an ultra zone as the nearly unbelievable player above. [Super Hexagon (App Store), coming to PC/Mac soon]